Projects costing $20 million have been undertaken in Qom Province in the last 12 months, deputy minister of energy said Wednesday.
“As the number of industrial towns is on the rise in the province, Tehran Regional Electricity Company, which also supplies Qom, is obliged to develop infrastructure to supply electricity to small towns,” Homayoun Haeri was quoted as saying by the Energy
Ministry’s news portal.
In addition to laying 700 kilometers of cables, a 230/63-kilovolt power substation went on stream and new transformers are operational in the region.
Two more substations (400/63-kV and 230/63- kV) are also under construction at an estimated cost of $25 million.
Located on the fringes of the central desert and having a dry climate, the shrine city has high potential to expand photovoltaic power output. Furthermore, solar panels have higher efficiency in the arid region.
Referring to the slow development of clean energy projects, he blamed fluctuations in foreign currency rates that have tripled since the spring of last year.
Construction of a 100 kilowatt solar power plant that started last December in the province and was expected to cost $60,000 will now cost double the amount. These problems and other hassles have visibly discouraged contractors from taking new work.
Regarding solutions and how to move forward and face challenges, Haeri said a new directive to raise tariffs for power produced by renewable sources was announced by the Energy Ministry last week to encourage investment in green energy.
The guaranteed purchase price the government has agreed to pay for solar power from private companies or households is 30% higher if locally-made solar panels are used.
Paying Extra
Accordingly, the new tariff is 4.9 cents per kilowatt hour for photovoltaic power stations, which will reach 6.4 cents per kWh if the plants are equipped with domestic panels.
There are more than 115 large solar farms in Iran, and around 3,500 small-scale solar installations in cities and villages. Over 2,500 rooftop photovoltaic power stations will be set up by next year, mainly in the deprived rural areas.
Gradual expansion of green energy since 2009 has helped Iran save 918 million liters of water in 10 years.
Over the last decade, close to 4.1 billion kilowatt hours of electricity was generated from renewable sources like wind farms and photovoltaic stations. For producing the same amount of power with natural gas, close to 1.1 billion cubic meters of the fuel would be required.
This amount (4.1 billion kilowatt hours) allowed Iran to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 2.87 million tons.
